EROTIC PRIEST

EROTIC PRIEST is basically a triangular love story. It involves a priest as the male side of the love equation and a woman of his Roman Catholic parish as the female part of the situation, while his priestly celibate vocation hovers over the other two emotional perspectives, involving the priest's required love to his God/Christ/Church that he had vowed to do when ordained. But the triangular foundation under the priest's life is crumbling: while his love for the woman is growing, his love for his vocation is dying. The woman comes into his life at the pivotal time of rising doubts about his career path and the subsiding belief in the rightness of a celibate life. It steers and goads him into thinking he has made a mistake; that he is not emotionally equipped to sustain his vows in the long run. It's wearing him down. His emotional life and rational mentality are in turmoil. In reality he's half man and half priest. The time period for EROTIC PRIEST is one year: 1967 to 1968 with flashbacks to 1966, the early 1950s and 1945. The papal encyclical upholding celibacy in 1967 plays an important part, as well as being a focal point, in the novel's dramatic story line. It's the hammer driving the nail that sends his life shooting off in a different direction. It will have have pertinent repercussions in the future involving the woman and her antagonistic brother, as well as the priest in his/her combined quest for a new life together. In other words, going from underground with their relationship to above-ground status and acceptance by the new people they will interact with, once he (the priest) is free to be a fully virile man to love his woman/wife of choice, leaving the lonely sterile celibate life of a bachelor parish priest behind him.